International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.

1/2, March 2016

SURVEY OF ANDROID APPS FOR AGRICULTURE

SECTOR

Hetal Patel and Dharmendra Patel

Assistant Professor, Smt. Chandaben Mohanbhai Patel Institute of Computer
Applications, CHARUSAT, Changa

ABSTRACT

India is an agriculture based developing country. Information dissemination to the knowledge intensive
agriculture sector is upgraded by mobile-enabled information services and rapid growth of mobile
telephony. It bridge the gap between the availability of agricultural input and delivery of agricultural
outputs and agriculture infrastructure. Mobile computing, cloud computing, machine learning and soft
computing are the immerging techniques which are being used in almost all fields of research. Apart from
this, they are also useful in our day-to-day activities such as education, medical and agriculture. This
paper explores how Android Apps of agricultural services have impacted the farmers in their farming
activities.

KEYWORDS

Android Apps, Mobile computing, Machine learning, Cloud computing

1. INTRODUCTION

This Agriculture is the primary occupation of the larger part of Indian population. 65-70 % of
Indian population is being depends on agriculture for their living. The challenging task for
farmers is information management mainly in terms of the amount of data and the complexity of
processes in precision farming.
The data regarding farming are available from many sources like printed media, audio and visual
aids, newspaper, TV, internet, mobile etc. but the formats and structures of data are dissimilar. So
its very hard for farmer to get the information and to understand the various information which
are disseminate from various sources. Sometime many manual steps are required while
processing data for transforming data from one format to another.
The progression in the agriculture production straight increases the Indian Economy and viceversa is also true. Mobile apps in the arena of agriculture can be the best option to increase
countriesagriculture production. The inventions in technology in agriculture domain are not
getting to the farmers; because of either most of them are illiterates or due to unawareness of the
location from where they can have information. Hence, utmost of the farmers is being failed in
acquisition of the possible production rate [4].
Today farmers are receiving diverse facts or information about faming like seeds, crop selection,
crop processes weather, fertilizer, pesticides etc. from various resources which are distributed on
DOI : 10.5121/ijist.2016.6207

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International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.1/2, March 2016

many different locations according to its origin, its processors, producers or vendors. The data
having different format and may have different specific contents can be heterogeneous in their
structure and format [1]. Therefore it is required to develop a system from where the required
information is available to the farmer directly.

New opportunities are shaped by smart phone technology for farmers. Farmers are capable with a
low cost smart phone and the particular software to gain facilities which couldnt available on
their hands before. In the days of financial crisis, farming is becoming more and more vigorous
and much more important to be completed efficiently during the time period. Several mobile
applications have been developed for acquisition of data in the field [1], livestock management
[3], AgroMobile [4], Krishiville [5] etc. This paper deals with the analysis of available android
based applications which are useful for farmers.

2. SMART PHONES

Information and Communication Technologies has seen a powerful role in daily life of farmers.
ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in agriculture is an emerging field focusing
on the agricultural development and rural development in India. Introduction of ICT in Indian
agriculture [2] enables the dissemination of requisite information at the right time [6].

The rapid growth of mobile telephony and the introduction of mobile enabled information
services provide a means to overcome existing asymmetry of information in all field like
agriculture, healthcare and education. There is a big gap between the availability and delivery of
agriculture inputs and agriculture infrastructure that can be is bridge by the mobile technologies.
A smart phone is the device that is used to make telephone calls, having additional features and
abilities like to send and receive e-mail, Wi-Fi and modem ability, internet access, Office
documents, easy touch screen operation and most of all the capability to run custom software.
The user interface is one more important characteristic of smart phone. A smart phone has a
touch screen facilities with abilities to zoom in and out using simple interface buttons, menus
and forms and the support of qwerty keyboard makes them easy and simple to operate for
people who are not very aware with ICT technology and even not enough educated. The software
must be easy to operate and farmer has to supply only the specific data required to complete an
operation or a process. The cost of the smart phone is varying from law range to high range. So
its easy for farmers to but any kind of smart phone which is in their budget.

2.1 Android Architecture

Android is an open source development platform that offers to build the very powerful
applications to developers. Android operating system is a stack of software components which is
roughly divided into five sections like Applications, Application Framework, Libraries, Android
Runtime, Linux Kernel and four main layers. It helps the developers to take free advantage of the
device hardware, access location information, run background services, call divert and sms etc.
Once the application has been published, it can download from third-party sites or through online
stores such as Android Market, the app store run by Google.

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International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.1/2, March 2016

3. STUDY/ REVIEW OF ANDROID APPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE SECTOR

The basic information required by the farmers is as follow and shown in the figure 1. The author
shows the information required from the crop planning to the selling of crop. The very basic
information need by the farmers are about information of soil, type of seed, required pesticide for
the particular crop in all stage of its growth, fertilizer type, crop diseases and its selling. Below
are the questions that must be answered for the better production of crop.

Fundamental information such as which crop to plant? Which seed varieties is to be

used?
When he can show and for weather information is required? Best cultivation practices for
my crops and soil
Which fertilizer and pesticides will be required for the crop?
The Prices, demand indicators, and logistical information for transport [9].

Fig 1 Information needs of farmers (Adapted from Mittal, 2010)

Agriculture information apps can be categories or classified as follow:

Business apps
Conference apps

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International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.1/2, March 2016

Diseases and pests apps

Farm management apps
Learning and reference apps
Location-based apps
Market data apps
Weather apps

In fig. 2, it can be seen the development of apps categories wise in the form of diagram with its
percentage (%). The number of apps developed for the agriculture related activities are very few
and it is required to develop one single app through which an uneducated farmers can easily
utilise it for the farming activities.

Fig. 2 Development of Android applications (in %)

We survey the following android app in the different area of agriculture. We found that all apps
are having dissimilar features. The FarmManager app is developed for the Greeek farmers for
small farm only. The AgroMobile app is useful for only recognition of botanical species and
disease detection. The Krishi Ville app is for agricultural commodities, weather forecast updates
and agricultural news updates, other farm activities cannot do by this app. The Agriculture Supply
Chain Management app is useful for those farmer who want to produce sugarcane. The
Scheduling, Controlling And Monitoring of Agricultural Devices app is limited to the work of
controlling the motor and pesticides proportion, monitoring the farming activities going on and
irrigation. The E-agree app is for detecting the leaf diseases. The Farmer Helping Services
provide the Horticulture information about flowers, fruits and vegetables in Gujarati Language.
The list of apps with its functionalities and limitations is shown in the table 1.

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International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.1/2, March 2016
Table 1. Android Apps and its description

App Name

Usage

Reference

[2]

FarmManager

The management of small farms, designed and

developed to respond to the needs and Characteristics
of farmers of Greek. It can store database, do farm
customization, easy field management, land field
data, easy job recording process, employees and
equipment.

AgroMobile

Develop Especially for the Indian farmers to assist

them in agricultural needs. It is used for botanical
species recognition and disease detection using a
simple mobile phone with camera.

[4]

Krishi Ville

It takes care of the updates of the different

agricultural commodities, weather forecast updates,
agricultural news updates. The application has been
designed taking Indian farming in consideration.

[5]

Agriculture Supply Chain The complete package for farmers who want to do
Management
farming on sugarcane and obtain good production
with proper management.

[10]

Scheduling, Controlling
And Monitoring of
Agricultural Devices

Used to farmer in
controlling the motor and
pesticides proportion, monitoring
the farming
activities going on in the farm remotely and also
allow for improving the efficiency of the irrigation
process.

[11]

E-agree

Used to detect detects leaf diseases. Also provides

[12]

Agriculture Decision
Support System

Provide information for cultivation of various kinds

of crops in various type of atmosphere.

[13]

Solution for farmer

consumer interaction

Provide information to the farmers about how to get

access to better inputs and gain more productivity; get
connected to the end consumers. Also give
information like the activities he should perform right
from the time when the seed germinates till the day
when the crop is ready to be harvested.

[14]

online market place, market rate guide, weather report

and soil information to the farmer.

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International Journal of Information Sciences and Techniques (IJIST) Vol.6, No.1/2, March 2016

MahaFarm

Helps in their farming activities that include agrobased crop information, weather updates, daily
market prices and news/loan informational updates.

[15]

Farmer Helping Services

Offers all the Horticulture information about flowers,

fruits and vegetables in Gujarati Language.
Efficient Use of Water and Power; helps the farmer to
ON/OFF the motor without his physical presence in
the field.

[16]

Provides all Kharif and Rabi diseases details

information such as types of diseases, pesticides used,
method for applying pesticides.

[18]

Irrigation Control System

Kharif and Rabi Crop
Diseases Information

[17]

4. Conclusion
Different apps are developed and used by farmers for their specific purpose. All this apps have
different usage as per its functionalities. Many apps are being utilized for different kind of
functionality regarding the farming activities like cropping information, pesticides, fertilizer,
seed, selling of crop, irrigation information, estimation of crop production, weather information
and information regarding the best practices of farming. We found that many of the apps are
static. Instead of that dynamic apps will be better to use. Also if all such listed functionalities are
bundle into the one single app and in the native language of the farmer, then it is easy to utilize it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the Principal Dr. Atul Patel for his continues
support.

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AUTHORS

Hetal Patel has completed her Bachelor of Computer

Science from Sardar Patel University

in 2004. In 2006, she holds degree of Master of Computer Applications from Sardar Patel
University in 2006. Since 2014, she is presently working with Smt. Chandaben Mohanbhai
Patel Institute of Computer Applications, under CHARUSAT University of Science and
Technology, situated at Changa, Gujarat, as an Assistant Professor. She is pursuing Ph.D. in
the subject of Data Mining.

Dr. Dharmendra Patel received Bachelor Degree in Industrial Chemistry- BSc.

(Industrial Chemistry) from North Gujarat University, Gujarat, India and Master Degree
in Computer Applications (MCA) from North Gujarat University, Gujarat, India. He
completed his Ph.D., in the field of Web Usage Mining. He is HOD of MCA Department
at Smt. Chandaben Mohanbhai Patel Institute of Computer Applications, under
CHARUSAT University of Science and Technology (CHARUSAT), Changa, Gujarat,
India.

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